DSMC & Scarlet Awaken a Sleeping Giant?

[Peter Moretti]

As long as Red stayed in the Digital Cinema arena, I think Sony, Canon, et al would have tried to ignore Red the best they could and made mostly piecemeal adjustments to their product lines.

 

But Red's Digital Still Movie Camera concept and their announcement of Scarlet, widened Red's target range far beyond film cameras and ultra-high-end digitals. Scarlet pits Red against prosumer lines like Canon's XH's, Panasonic's HVX's and so on. Red has even been quoted as saying they want to sell Scarlets to (very rich??) soccer moms; that's HV-20 territory.

 

And the Digital Still Movie Camera concept seems to take aim at DSLR's.

 

One area Red DOES seem happy to concede is live broadcast.

 

I wonder if Red's widened attack upon the camera world is closer to Normandy or Pearl Harbor for the company?

[Brian Drysdale]

I suspect the full RAW workflow won't be suitable for a lot of time critical work, although the proxies seem to have been used for some work.

 

When it comes to a price war I suspect the large manufacturers would have the advantage due to to the volumes of scale, plus a willingness to use more cost effective materials (and lighter) in their camera bodies. RED appear to aiming at what is termed as the professional market, which is always much smaller than the consumer market. Their business model of supplying direct from the manufacturer suits a more knowledgeable client base.

 

A downside is that quite a few of RED's would be customers are price driven hobbyists, so perhaps owning a RED could be aspirational to them whilst in practise they buy the Canon DSLR that shoots video.

[Saul Rodgar]

A downside is that quite a few of RED's would be customers are price driven hobbyists, so perhaps owning a RED could be aspirational to them whilst in practise they buy the Canon DSLR that shoots video.

 

Indeed, the advent of RED has spurred a new breed of "DP's," who only yesterday were rank amateurs, exclusively shoot digital, are very tech savvy and are now making pretty big inroads in the commercial and feature job market-place, outside of very select circles. Here in NM that is happening pretty dramatically, and some of my friends in LA have confirmed the rising trend in Tinseltown as well.

 

So the RED threat is not only for older camera manufacturers product survival but for camera people's careers elsewhere. Which is fine, as the need to stay competitive to survive is what the world is based on.

 

In a very few short years, the camera manufacturer and camera people market-place landscapes will be radically different. But I suspect a lot of these new Digi-DP's will fall by the wayside once it is established their inexperience and lack of artistic control is more of a liability than a benefit _which has also started happening here. And the same thing could happen to RED, who knows?

[John Sprung]

But I suspect a lot of these new Digi-DP's will fall by the wayside once it is established their inexperience and lack of artistic control is more of a liability ....

 

Yup, the same thing happened with editors about 20 years ago when cutting went digital.

 

 

 

-- J.S.

[Brian Drysdale]

In a very few short years, the camera manufacturer and camera people market-place landscapes will be radically different. But I suspect a lot of these new Digi-DP's will fall by the wayside once it is established their inexperience and lack of artistic control is more of a liability than a benefit _which has also started happening here. And the same thing could happen to RED, who knows?

 

Quite a few top DP aren't techie as such, but are more into images and have extremely good people skills. There could be some of what happened with editors, when producers thought it was about being computer savvy, when the requirement was still about using images and sound to tell a story. Unfortunately, the NLE programs were designed by computer programmers than editors - something pointed out by a film editor friend of mine who did his degree in computer science. He's a big Lightworks fan forced to use AVID.